Electricity in dying thunderstorms

Abstract

We made one balloon sounding of the electric field in each of two dying thunderstorms. Both balloons were launched 20 min after the storm's last lightning flash. Each sounding revealed substantial residual electrification. The peak magnitudes of electric field in the two dying storms were 35 and 71 kV/m. The charge structure in both storms appeared to consist of one internal negative charge region with positive screening layers at the upper and lower cloud boundaries. One or two negative charge regions were found below cloud base. The main charge regions had inferred charge densities of about 1 nC/m 3 and were hundreds of meters thick.